The Southern All Stars Dirt Racing Series made its second stop of the season at the high-banked Tazewell Speedway on Sunday night for a $4,400-to-win Super Late Model event contested in honor of the late Buddy Rogers. Knoxville’s Billy Ogle, Jr. emerged as the winner of a hotly contested race on a hot east Tennessee night.

Jeff Wolfenbarger began the night by setting fast time in Group A qualifying and overall among the 20 cars on hand with a time of 11.187 seconds around the third-mile oval. The top-4 from each group were locked into the feature so Brett Miller, Bryan Hendrix and Pierce McCarter joined Wolfenbarger as those guaranteed a starting spot in the main event.

Stacy Boles led Group B qualifiers with a lap of 11.289 seconds with Ogle, Vic Hill and Daniel Baggerly also earning feature berths from that group.

Riley Hickman and Tommy Kerr each scored wins in the two last chance qualifiers.

When the green flag waved over the 44-lap feature, Boles went to the early lead from his outside front row starting spot with Wolfenbarger, Miller and Ogle in tow. However, it didn’t take Ogle long to make his move to the front as he went three-wide on the backstretch during the second lap to move around Wolfenbarger and Miller for the runner-up position.

Boles, meanwhile, moved out to a lead of almost a full straightaway as he picked his way through race traffic throughout the early laps. However, a lap 16 caution for the slowing car of Wolfenbarger bunched the field and offered a temporary reprieve from the lapped traffic.

The ensuing restart provided Ogle with the opportunity he needed to make his move. On lap 19, he threw his #201 machine into turns one and two under Boles’ #11 ride in hopes of claiming the top spot. However, the two cars came together at the exit of turn two and Boles held on.

But the next time through that same set of turns, Ogle used the same maneuver. And this time, came out with the lead.

Hill moved around Boles for 2nd after a lap 25 restart and began to apply pressure to Ogle, several times looking under the leader. But once traffic again became a factor, Ogle was able to slip away and build a relatively comfortable margin as the race ran without a caution after that on lap 25.

“When I got to the lead on the bottom, I knew it was good but it was rough,” Ogle said in victory lane. “My crew chief, David Bryant, was telling me to keep my eyes open and to keep doing what I was doing. I saw Vic’s nose at the right time and I went to the bottom.”